The present invention relates to a device for producing portions of food products and more particularly textured portions of food products from food products in pieces, especially patties of fresh meat in muscle.
There has been known from patent document EP 1397047 a device for producing portions of minced meat, such as minced steaks, comprising a mincer outputting a stream of minced meat, having an “angel's hair” type stringy structure created by the discharge grating of the mincer, an endless conveyor belt transporting the stream of minced meat at the output of the mincer and a cutting and shaping device comprising cutting means for cutting the stream of meat into portions, lateral shaping means acting simultaneously on each side of the stream of minced meat to shape the contours of the portions and vertical shaping means cooperating with said lateral shaping means to confer to said portions the desired thickness.
The mincer is associated to a flow-regulating member called pusher, typically comprising a pump, for example a pallet or piston type pump, supplied on the inlet by a hopper and whereof the discharge outlet is equipped with said mincer.
Patent document EP 1 509 089 describes an identical device for producing minced steaks filled with a filling. The mincer is equipped at the output with two distribution spouts for forming a lower stream of minced meat and an upper stream of minced meat respectively deposited on a main conveyor and a secondary conveyor. The filling is deposited on the lower stream of meat, and the upper stream of meat is then brought to overlap the lower stream of meat and the filling deposited on the latter to form a stream of filled minced meat, that then passes in the aforementioned cutting and shaping device.
Such devices are provided for producing portions from meat minced and extruded by the holes of the grating of a mincer. The final products obtained are textured into strings of minced meat oriented longitudinally, and thus have a stringy aspect.
The object of the present invention is to propose a device making it possible to obtain new products having a different texture.